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Friday, September 4, 2009

Not Yet Harvest Time

We had a little patch of soil in the front of our new house that I just had to fill with seed this spring. A packet of "wildflowers" and a packet of Forget Me Nots went in, and did absolutely nothing until about August. Then suddenly we had flowers! I kept looking for the little blue Forget Me Nots because I love the colour. Then I realized that the little pink ones were actually the Forget Me Nots...they can be pink...and it totally surprised me.Mark in the New Testament records some of Jesus's Kingdom Parables and compares the Kingdom of God to a seed being planted in the ground. Days go by, and then a plant grows. It's completely different from the seed and has nothing to do with the person who planted it. Sure, if it's watered, fertilized, etc, the plant can be stronger and more vibrant. But basically the planter can't 'make' the seed grow.We talked about this in our devotions at work one day and there were some interesting parallels from this story to the growth of Jesus' life in ours. There was the usual 'evangelistic connotation'...you may plant a seed in someone's life without even knowing, or deliberately, but you may not see growth - that doesn't mean it hasn't taken root. But there are other interesting truths we can gather from this description of the Kingdom.Kingdome life in us...the love, mercy, grace and everything that Jesus is...will continue to grow. It is not dependent on our works. Yes, developing an intimate relationship with Him will make it stronger and more vibrant, but it will grow no matter what works we think we can chalk up to our side of the ledger.Kingdom life looks very different from the seed it started as, and we can never rely on our own wisdom to know what it will look like in the future. We may think we are getting blue Forget Me Nots, but that may not be what appears!The Kingdom of God is also in the future...what we are now is not what we will be, and the Eternal Kingdom that God has in mind is not what we see now. He is preparing His kingdom, and us, for an amazing eternity that we 'can only imagine'.We are harvesting crops from our gardens now but the harvest God has planned from the eternal seeds He has planted in His children is beyond our comprehension. Till then, let's keep planting seeds, watering, fertilizing, and trusting God that He will grow Himself in us.